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Drone pic reveals Russian ‘hellscape’ in besieged Marinka

Chilling images have captured the destruction of the city of Marinka, a rural centre of some 9300 people.

Jamie SeidelJamie Seidel
@JamieSeidel
3 min read
March 6, 2023 - 3:18PM
Marinka has been destroyed by fighting.
Marinka has been destroyed by fighting.

Russia is on the brink of “liberating” a city in Ukraine’s Donbas. But drone footage reveals there’s nothing left of it.

The scenes could be mistaken for black-and-white photos of Hiroshima or Nagasaki after the atom bombs of World War II.

Google Maps images show the destruction in the embattled Ukrainian city of Marinka.
Google Maps images show the destruction in the embattled Ukrainian city of Marinka.
Marinka in 2023.
Marinka in 2023.

But the white is snow. And the black is the charred remains of buildings and trees.

They are what was the city of Marinka, a rural centre of some 9300 people.

“It used to be a peaceful city. It used to be … until Russia’s war criminals razed it to the ground,” a tweet by Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs states.

Marinka has been under siege since 2014. Picture: Brendan Hoffman
Marinka has been under siege since 2014. Picture: Brendan Hoffman

Russian forces have been slowly pushing into the city over the past month. Each new push has devastated more of the landscape as Moscow’s forces unleash their “scorched earth” artillery tactics.

Military analysts now assess the last Ukrainian defenders will likely soon be overrun, with Russian armoured personnel carriers and tanks already advancing street-by-street.

Ukraine’s military General Staff report that Russian forces appear to be staging a major push out of the occupied regional city of Donetsk.

Urban hellscape

Marinka itself isn’t important. But it does sit astride significant road and rail links southwest of Donetsk leading into western Ukraine.

A similar rural city, Avdiivka, is also under heavy Russian assault. Likewise, it straddles road and rail lines leading out of Donetsk towards the northwest.

But it hasn’t received the Marinka treatment yet.

Along with the sweeping images showing the city’s utter destruction, other footage depicts the brutal urban combat as it unfolds.

Ukrainian losses are not being revealed. But scenes of burning tanks and Russian armoured personnel carriers advancing through the streets – cannons blazing – expose the intensity of the fighting.

Marinka has been on the frontline of Moscow’s invasion since 2014, when Russian troops and Donbas separatists first seized the city. Then, four months later, it was retaken by Ukrainian forces.

Another assault followed in June 2015, but Ukrainian defenders repelled the attackers.

Ukrainian soldiers work in their artillery unit in the direction of Marinka, 15 January 2023. Picture: Diego Herrera Carcedo
Ukrainian soldiers work in their artillery unit in the direction of Marinka, 15 January 2023. Picture: Diego Herrera Carcedo

It remained the subject of sporadic shelling and skirmishes for several years.

But it became the scene of intense fighting as President Putin’s “Special Operation” was launched in February last year.

Much of the city was evacuated. Now ongoing fighting has blasted it into rubble as tanks, artillery and mortars attempt to evict the remaining defenders from their entrenched positions.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reports Russian military bloggers claiming the attack on Marinka is being conducted by separatists of the “Donetsk People’s Republic 1st Army Corps”. Russian invading forces appear to be concentrating to the north.

Street battles

“Why are the militaries of each nation fighting so hard for seemingly insignificant terrain? It is because they are symbolically important, and their control consequently has political value,” states the US Army’s West Point Modern War Institute. https://mwi.usma.edu/twelve-months-of-war-in-ukraine-have-revealed-four-fundamental-lessons-on-urban-warfare/

As more of the landscape becomes farmland, little remains of the region’s once-great forests. And that means fewer places to hide.

“Since the start of this war, urban areas have been the focal points — the places where much of the most intense fighting has occurred,” the MWI argues. “Neither side has been able to avoid or bypass urban areas because they are tactically, operationally, and sometimes strategically important.”

The new mountains are concrete residential apartments. The new forests are power lines and street lights. The new gulleys are stormwater drains and alleyways.

High-rise buildings limit what kinds of weaponry can be employed. And cluttered, narrow streets mean centralised command-and-control networks can quickly break down.

Both sides have adopted small drones as a means of observing what’s going on in the immediate area, carrying messages, and even dropping grenades on key opposing positions.

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“But while urban areas may be the war’s most important environment, at least to this point, no two urban battles have been the same,” the MWI analysis reads.

And the complexity of urban warfare demands well-equipped, well-coordinated combat units.

“Military force, like Russia, that attempts to deploy individual arms independently and without mutual support — first artillery, then armour, followed by infantry, for instance — will continue to pay extremely high costs in casualties,” it concludes.

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Original URL: https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/military/drone-pic-reveals-russian-hellscape-in-besieged-marinka/news-story/d7c6183d0fca292c885522a4682a9f08